Lecture 5

I listened to radio a lot when I was in primary school and still a significant amount through high school. I was so interested throughout these years that I did work experience at my local FM station, Gladstone 93.5 Hot FM! Definitely wasn’t the type of station where you’d find the likes of Fidler or Austin but it was good enough for me to get my first taste of the industry. I wrote a small amount of content for the announcers to use and even got little bits of air time myself now and again. Being a commercial station, I was of course used for radio ‘stunts’. The lowly work experience girl was always the first option haha. After my time there though I have nothing but shining praise from the wonderful experience and knowledge they showed me.

Listening to this week’s lecture revealed to me a much more intimate side of radio. Where I was used to, as Richard said, seven minute interviews, both men in the lecture recording are capable of capturing audiences for an hour at a time with one subject. The amount of learned skill or natural ability it would take to master that absolutely astonishes me.

Both Richard Fidler and Steve Austin make reference to the fact that in order to get as fulfilling an interview as possible you must make your subject comfortable and give them the respect of listening to what they have to say. Talk less and you should receive more. To hear these major players in the business offer such direct advice was so exciting! Just sitting alone in room, furiously scribbling notes into my book I felt a little foolish as I realised I could listen to these gems of wisdom as many times as I pleased.

Another point of interest from the lecture was how well radio is merging with the new platforms of social media. Broadcastings are becoming so much easier to access at any time and from all around the world via podcasts. If I wanted to listen to something on the radio I would probably just look something up straight away on a podcast (even the old episodes of Hamish and Andy are good for a laugh). I don’t have a clock radio at college so it’s pretty much my only option. But this is definitely a good thing as without podcasts I would be completely shut off from the radio world. Reference was also made to Twitter and the speed of news flow it now allows. I only made a Twitter account through this class but after ‘following’ a majority of news outlets I can definitely recognise the value this new medium possesses.

Finally, I’d like to reflect on what Austin said towards the end of his interview. The fact that humans are emotional creatures and in order to get a good radio story you MUST be human and search to the fullest extent of human experiences. This is something I hope I am one day able to master, the ability to take others on a journey and fully captivate them using sound, and sound alone.